


Every Item Has a Soul

by lucymonster



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo RPF
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Goat Herder Bucky Barnes, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 01:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20716085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: Shuri enlists a new ally in her efforts to rehabilitate Bucky.





	Every Item Has a Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [K_Popsicle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Popsicle/gifts).

Bucky is always learning new things about himself. Today, he’s learning that he apparently speaks fluent Japanese.

God knows how or why. Morita tried to teach him a few words back in the Commando days. But they were always so busy, chasing Hydra here and there across Europe, and there was never much time between firefights to stop and revise his vocab list - and besides, those were the days when Bucky still wore his soldier’s identity like a favourite cashmere sweater, and in his soldier’s mindset there was little left to pique his linguistic interest once he found out that the closest correlates for important words like ‘cocksucker’ and ‘fuck’ were the second-person pronoun and an overly direct ‘no’.

Hydra had minimal interest in postwar Japan – or at least, minimal interest that involved the kinds of assassinations they kept the Winter Soldier for. He remembers bodyguard missions and a couple of brushes with local crime chapters, but those guys all had perfect English and a few of them could even keep up with the Soldier and his handlers in Russian. There was no need to venture outside the mission bounds. No chance to join an expat conversation group.

Still. At some point, while they were busy wiping and rewiring and tampering with his brain, Hydra must have decided to throw some Japanese into the mix just in case. Bucky knows they must have, because this tiny woman with a sparkling smile and a soft pink cardigan is standing in the middle of his mud-brick hut, filling a volumetrically disproportionate amount of space with her enthusiasm, and he understands every word of her rapid-fire speech before the interpreter has a chance to chime in. 

Grammatically, at least, he understands every word. The actual _ significance _of her patter about proper folding gratitude household miscellaneous has yet to reveal itself.

‘It doesn’t spark joy, no,’ he tells her, in politely neutral Japanese that comes out clear enough despite the same twanging American accent that always plagued his Russian and German and French. ‘It’s a bucket. I use it to mix up grain feed for my goats.’

‘So it helps you every single day,’ the woman called KonMari says, eyes brimming with sincerity. ‘It is time to change your relationship with this item and appreciate its contribution to your life.’ She holds out the bucket. ‘Bring it close to your chest and reflect in gratitude on all it has done for you. Only then can you judge if it belongs in your home.’

Obediently, Bucky takes the bucket from her. He pictures himself throwing it on the discard pile, despite the fact that it’s still perfectly good and hasn’t sprung a leak yet. He pictures trying to measure out the right amount of goat feed straight from the sack, with only one arm and no receptacle to stir it in. It would be pointless and annoying, and yet the bucket cradled to his chest remains nothing more or less than a bucket. It sparks no emotion, joyful or otherwise.

‘Remind me why we’re doing this?’ he says. Thanks to the combined teachings of Morita and Hydra, he knows exactly how to say _ What the hell, lady, this is crazy talk _in Japanese. But he holds back. He doesn’t deserve a fraction of the effort Shuri has been putting into his rehabilitation, and this isn’t even the weirdest thing she’s asked him to do in his journey towards sanity. This KonMari person wants to blitz through his belongings like a crazed gunman in a crowded room, and he still remembers the not-so-distant days when that gunman was him.

‘Shuri-san said you’re having trouble finding purpose and joy in life. Through the magic of tidying, I can help you discover who you truly want to be.’

It could be him again, any day now, if he lets things go wrong here. Bucky closes his eyes and he sees himself wading through oceans of blood on a flesh-rending, crop-burning rampage of vengeance. _You don't spark joy_, he'll tell his old Hydra tormentors as he forces the muzzle of his gun between their lips. _It's time for me to thank you and let you go._

‘I can tell you who my goats want me to be,’ he says. The words taste like burnt air in the aftermath of a massacre. Stay focused - this is exactly what Shuri's been talking about. Exactly why they built his hut so far away from the city. ‘They want me to be the guy who delivers their grain feed each day.’ He puts the bucket on the keep pile.

KonMari gives him a long, piercing look that seems to cut right through the woven layers of his Wakandan robes to the innermost sanctum of his mind. It’s a look Bucky’s used to getting, and a part of himself he’s more than used to having forcibly exposed and studied. But he doesn’t mind the way this woman does it. Hers isn’t the hacksaw gaze of a Hydra scientist. It’s a delicate scalpel, razor-thin and steady in a master surgeon’s healing hand. ‘You’re not the kind of person who clings to objects for their own sake,’ she says. ‘You take no joy in ownership or acquisition. You have a practical spirit, and your deepest desire is to be useful to the people around you. You want to do your job well and help others.’

‘I…’ Bucky swallows. Determination washes away the lingering taste of gun smoke. He will be that person again. He will. ‘I guess so.’

‘And that,’ says KonMari with a knowing smile, ‘is something you have in common with this bucket.’


End file.
